What is the ‘public opinion’ on climate change?

There has been a lot of discussion recently on some climate related sites, such as Rabett Run and Only in it for the Gold on the questions of framing and the Overton window. This is about how science, politics and the media ‘place’ discussions about climate change, global warming, emissions policy, and the like.

I’m not going to argue about the main idea here, but I was concerned about some of the assumptions made about what the public perception of climate change actually is. There appears to be an underlying assumption that the ‘frame’ of debate within which public awareness is constructed is definable as a subset of the range of views on climate change. My intuition, based on personal experience on the Netweather.tv website, one of my favoured fora, is that the range of public opinion is much greater than the ‘framing’ concept allows for.

So, to find out what the ‘public’ thinks, I have started a survey at Netweather. How legitimate is this as a measure of public opinion? Well, the members of the forum are a broad cross section of people, in terms of age, gender, and education. There is a bias towards male rather than female representation, and a bias towards the UK, (though there are a substantial number of international members). The biggest common feature is a very British interest in the weather. Much of the forum is taken up with discussions of weather conditions and forecasting, in particular, the output of weather models. Some common fixations appear; a love of cold weather and snow, an interest in hurricanes, interest in weather extremes, thunderstorms, data.In an attempt to represent the full range of views, I have tried to offer options across the range of opinions about climate change. No doubt the questions might be better phrased or more representative, but it was the best I could do.

Here is the range of questions in the opinion poll:

What is your opinion about climate change?

1= There is no warming; its a fabrication based on inaccurate measurement. It is arrogant to presume that we can have any effect on Nature.

2 = The recent warming is entirely natural. CO2 has nothing to do with it. It could well be the Sun.

3 = There may be some changes in the atmosphere, but the changes are all within natural limits. The ‘scares’ are exaggerations with a political motive.

4 = It’s so confusing I can’t make my mind up; it is getting warmer but I don’t know why. All of the arguments sound convincing & I can’t decide who to trust.

5= There is warming and CO2 may cause some of it, but the science is too uncertain to be sure. The IPCC probably underestimates some of the natural forcings and overestimates the role of CO2.

6 = The mainstream scientific view, as per the IPCC, has got it more or less right. I accept that the scientists probably know what they are doing and we are warming the planet.

7 = The IPCC is compromised by political intervention; I agree with the scientists who say that it is underestimating the problem and something needs to be done about it soon.

8=Too much of the science is conservative in its findings; I think it’s probably worse than they are saying.

9 = If we don’t do something about emissions in the next few years, we are in real trouble. Action is needed now to mitigate the threat of serious warming and other impacts.

10 = We are on the edge of a disaster, which we may not be able to prevent. We are messing up the earth’s natural systems and will pay the price in some ways even if we act now.

If I have done it right, this should link directly to the relevant page on Netweather. Hopefully, you will be able to see the live poll. If you want to have a vote, you’ll have to join the forum. Or you can express your opinion here.

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10 comments

What I was trying to say is a bit different, that “public opinion” is shaped by what is publically discussed. While those with strong opinions span a large range, there are a huge number of people who pay little attention and their views are shaped by the public discussion. Any set of views not contained in that “window” will never reach the non attention payers and will be discounted in the making of policy.

The Media is an area where I have some history, having taught about it for several years now, and I have no doubt that you are correct in arguing that the views of the majority of the public are more likely to be shaped by the mass media than by any other force, including , regretfully, climate science blogs (do these count as being mass media? No – niche audiences make them specialist media).

The ‘public discussion’, I suppose, is defined by the output of the Film, TV, and News organisations collectively, though there have been few films to date, their influence is apparently disproportionately large.

I wonder how accurate you are in saying that the views outside the ‘window’ will be discounted in the making of policy: this seems like a more complex matter and deserves further thought.

Finally, it has been pointed out (by Michael Tobis on his blog) that there is a noticeable difference in the approaches taken by the media in the USA and in the UK; I suspect this will be apparent in many countries, which means that we need to take the US case separately (as the ‘key market’ here.

I can’t answer your poll question. I have dramatically divergent opinions about WG1 and WG 2. I am unsure whether by “IPCC” you mean physical climatologists or impacts experts.

I think WG 1 is reliable. I have heard from two experts whose opinions I trust that the WG2 report is unfortunate. The physical climatologist thinks it is a severe overstatement and the ecologist thinks it is a severe understatement. I don’t know which side I fall on that, which ranks me among the confused. However, I agree that unlike the WG1 SPM, the WG2 SPM is quite incoherent and unconvincing.

Michael; thank you for contributing to my blog (and for linking to it on your, genuine, climate science site. Your answer is important, as I am in the process of preparing something similar for more serious research purposes. I presume from your answer that if the question and options were reframed in terms of the WG1 you would be able to answer? In your opinion, would this make the poll sufficiently robust to base a proper analysis on?

It has also been pointed out to me by a specialist in research that the last two options are not mutually exclusive in the same way as the others. I have also neglected to reduce bias by offering equal weighting in terms of the comparative word counts of each option.

My more serious research project is to use a revised set of options, which makes them more specific in content and balances the word-count. Further revisions may be necessary.

Your observations about the differences between the two sections of the AR4 is interesting. It also leads me to wonder what the response is going to be when the even more ‘tricky’ WG3 comes out next month…

I also think you could develop two polls from this one. One would be the extent, or lack, of global warming people perceive and why. The other poll would deal with their response to their own perception.

A fair number of teens and twenty-somethings, I notice on their blogs, are scared witless by nightmare scenarios of global warming—partly I think because this group are more likely to have watched the more alarming snippets from AIT (which I have seen in full several times) on GoogleVideo or YouTube, but also because many in this younger group have watched The Day After Tomorrow on DVD, or have seen it recently on TV (it is doing the network rounds).

I would also add another point beyond number 10 to cater for the total defeatists, who declare that absolutely nothing can be done about AGW because it is not anthropogenic, and anyone who believes there is any human causation (let alone understanding or solution) is arrogant in the extreme (i.e. by taking on the role of God/nature). This plays well alongside the apocalyptic views and conspiracy theories of life in its appeal to some.

There is another group of people who have no concern as to whether climate change is true or not, but they lead very green lifestyles and are committed to reducing their carbon footprints because it is “obviously good for all” and especially for the poor, and they do not believe their views depend on scientists’ nor politicians’ pronouncements.

Another question you could find revealing is “from which source(s) do you get (trusted) information on climate change?”—though that is not an opinion in itself, it would help in understanding where public opinion is being formed.

As far as public perceptions are concerned, I think the gulf is closing between the American and British views. However, media, energy company and government sources of information designed for the public—which are not the same as information that is publicly available—differ. The national UK sources are way ahead of rough national equivalents in the US in terms of confidence in their own statements and proposals for moving ahead, although they can also be unduly alarmist. I think the difference in the US is much more State-specific, so there are states like California, for example, that are on a par with Europe in terms of public pronouncements and local political action to combat climate change, but people who live in CA are still fed a national diet of U.S. news that is by degrees more skeptical or alarmist, I think, and swings between these extremes more wildly than does the British coverage.

My last point is in word choice. If you decide to revise your questions, it may be worth considering words on a gender basis as well as plain word count. As far as I can tell, there are very few women represented in online discussions of climate change. I would even be interested in producing a version of your opinion poll for kids on both sides of the Atlantic: some have very strong views, and teens love doing surveys online :-)

Your choice shows just how tricky it can be to separate out meaningful opinions on the subject, as did Michael’s before. This ‘first effort’ has revealed that unpacking opinions on GW is no simple matter.

Just yesterday, it occurred to me that a poll with an age and gender breakdown would be interesting, though I suspect the results would be relatively predictable. A second question on this could be: ‘From where do you get your information on CC?’

To be frank, this is a poor poll in too many ways; there is insufficient distinction between some choices, and at least one option is apparently redundant. I am currently working on a new project more formally, which deals with this and related issues, but this new poll has gone through six drafts so far and should be more rigorous.

You can see why adding the ‘defeatist alarmist’ view after 10 might be a problem; the other questions are graduated from one broad extreme to its opposite (with 4 as the ‘don’t know’ option); in principle, the response curve should show at a glance what the ‘overall’ perception is here.

The other group you mention would class, to my mind, as ‘environmentalists’, and as such might have a range of opinions on GW which might or might not effect the way in which they choose to conduct their lives.

There will be another post relating to all of this later today, as so many questions have arisen from the ongoing work.

Your final point sort of contradicts Michael’s assertion that the ‘frame’ of discourse is more narrowly focussed in the USA; perhaps it does need to be looked at on a state-by state basis, though the way things are going, responses could well follow the broad party divisions, so politicised as the debate there seems to be becoming.

Actually, I agree with Michael’s assertion that the frame of discourse is narrower in the US as a whole precisely because the framing is controlled to a greater degree in American than in Britain by special interests who depend on two things: confusion to delay action by making the majority of the public feel climate change is such a complicated issue that they can do nothing about, so they don’t care, and the remaining minority of the public are left to choose between two “opinion sets” which pit the likes of loud confident ExxonMobil views against the quiet cautious IPCC assessments.

The builders are working around me as I type and I just had an enlightening conversation with them about public views on climate change. They say the only two topics of conversation at the pub nowadays are football (as ever) and global warming. A rough guess puts 80% at our builders’ local in the non-opinionated crowd who wish the other 20% would shut up about global warming because it’s too complicated, too controversial, doesn’t affect us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The vocal 20% argue basically about points in The Great Global Warming Swindle, which shows that whichever side of the debate people are on, that programme has a lot to answer for, and climate change debate framing is being successfully controlled by people I’d never buy an ice-cream from, let alone a used-car … :-(

It does seem that the main stimulants of debate are film and TV. It is hard to know how much influence these have on opinion, though. Sometimes, it appears that the reaction of any individual to such material is preconditioned by their existing opinion, at other times, it seems that the ‘inbetweeners’ tend to fluctuate from one extreme POV to its opposite.

I have very little doubt, though, that the tendency of the media to polarise the issues does have one effect; for the multitude who are uncertain about the issues, it serves to add to their confusion and create a sense of helplessness; not only in response to the nature of the forces at work, but also in response to a perceived inability in themselves to understand the ‘truth’ about the issues.

Does this mean that the ‘disinformationist’ party is currently winning? It looks like it; this is why the matter of creating a discourse from science which addresses the multitude is so critical.
Regards,

This is the option I had imagined might be the ‘baseline’ on the poll, but it hasn’t turned out that way. In fact, 36.63% of the respondents have gone for option 5; that the IPCC is exaggerating the importance of CO2 in the equation.

If you divide the response ito three broad ‘camps’, there’s a roughly even split between the ‘denialist’ or ‘CO2 Sceptic’ end and the ‘edge of destruction/serious problem’ end, with the middle ground occupied by another broad ‘grouping’ which sees CO2 as an issue but is not agreed on its importance.

To me, by far the most revealing result is the one which shows that fewer than 10% of the respondents would answer as you have: what is this telling us about the relationship between the public and climate science?
If I were are ‘figure’ in climate science, this one result alone would give me cause for alarm.